• 한국노년학
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.1-24
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• 2021

This study aims to examine how old people think about 'dignifiable aging'. For the study, the authors have tried to understand and analyze of old people's view on 'classy and gracious aging' through their life experiences. The study focuses on the questions of 'how the participants experience aging', 'how they understand well, classy and successful aging and 'how they explain their ideas of the aging, then analyzes their ideas as types of 'within cases' as well as 'inter cases'. Indepth interview has employed as main methodology of data collection with the analysis of concerned written documents such as on-line and off-line essays as secondary data. The collected data had been basically sorted and analyzed by sorting commonimity and differences. Then they have been classified into the thems that indicate meanings and forms of 'dignified aging': 'ageless mind', 'happiness determined by one's mind', 'responsibility on family', 'desire for learning and social activities'. These meaning-units are added up to the main meaning of '(fullfilled) satisfaction through life-values' mediated by 'acceptance and acknowledgement', 'efforts', 'others' gaze', 'dreams and hopes', '(fullfilled) Satisfaction through life-values' can be achieved by 'sharing with others'. An interesting fact is that the meaning-units can be devided into two groups: 'the real life is the ideal life' which explains the actualization of the ideal in the daily life and 'life, conflict, the ideal' in which the real and the ideal are parellel with constant conflicts. In the conclusion, some implications and suggestions derived from the analysis are described from the v iew of social welfare.